It was a first, as nearly as anyone at Opera America or the League of American Orchestra could think: the first time an American symphony orchestra had presented Richard Wagner’s complete Ring of the Nibelung in a weeklong cycle of performances.
That distinction went to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, led by music director Fabio Luisi, in October 2024. If you missed those performances, or want to relive them, audio recordings are being issued in mid-May online and in a 13-CD boxed set from the Delos label.
The casts include estimable Wagnerians Mark Delavan (Wotan/Wanderer), Lise Lindstrom (Brünnhilde), Daniel Johansson (Siegfried), Christopher Ventris (Siegmund), Sara Jakubiak (Sieglinde), Tómas Tómasson (Alberich), Deniz Uzun (Fricka) and Tamara Mumford (Erda). Assembled from three Meyerson Symphony Center performances of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre and two each of Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, the recordings were supervised by Grammy-winning producer Dirk Sobotka, working with the DSO’s resident recording engineer George Gilliam.
The release revives a relationship with Delos, which issued numerous DSO recordings during the 1994-2006 music directorship of Andrew Litton, including most of a Mahler symphony cycle.
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